CALL FOR PAPERS: **Critical Reflections on **Multicultural Dance in Canada

We are seeking proposals and contributions for a collection of original,5000-7000 word essays entitled *Critical Reflections on Multicultural Dancein Canada* ("*Multicultural Dance*"). As the first scholarly collection ofits kind, *Multicultural Dance* explores the ways in which groups andindividuals in Canada practice, organize, perform, and reproduce differentforms and styles of dance that are considered part of an ethno-culturaltradition and heritage. The aim of the collection is to interrogate howculture, identity, community, and nationalism relate to folk, ethnic,national, and popular dance in Canada from the late 19th century to thepresent. The book unapologetically reflects upon and engages with theconcept of multiculturalism, and in so doing dialogues with notions ofcosmopolitanism, interculturalism, hybridity, creolization,transculturalism, diaspora, and the like.

We highlight the concept of multiculturalism because it has been, andcontinues to be, an important element in Canadian society, public policy,and nationhood. This is true even though it has been roundly challenged forits lack of attention to issues of social inequality (i.e., gender, class,and race), promotion of ethno-cultural stereotypes, denial of peoples'agency, and representation of ethno-culture as homogeneous, bounded, andfixed. These criticisms are embedded, as well, in the scholarship on folk,ethnic, and national dance – all part of what we are referring to as themulticultural dance literature. Yet, there is very little, extensive, andsystematic work on the topic in the Canadian scene. A collection of essaysthat critically explores the production, representation, and function ofmulticultural dance in Canada is thus long overdue.

Contributors are encouraged to consider the questions below from a varietyof critical approaches and theoretical perspectives. We welcome papers thatemploy different methodological approaches: ethnographic (interviews withvarious stakeholders involved in the production and consumption ofcontemporary multicultural dance); historical (archival and oral historicalapproaches that might involve questions about "past-ness," memory, and whatis saved in archives, etc.); visual cultural studies (analysis ofmulticultural dance images, both content and composition, in photographs,moving images, sketches and the like); and experiential (a focus onautobiographical knowledge of multicultural dance by dancers andchoreographers directly involved in the bodily practice of a specificmulticultural dance form).

Possible questions include, but are not limited to:

· How do individuals, groups, and policy makers involved inmulticulturalism use the terms folk, ethnic, or national dance?

· How do we define multicultural dance? How might it differ from folk,ethnic, or national dance? How might it be the same?

· How do the creators and performers of multicultural dance engage inthe notion of authentic cultural expression?

· What informs the notion of the choreographer and choreography inmulticultural dance?

· What are the connections between a sense of "group-ness" and kineticexpressions in multicultural dance?

· How does the costuming used in multicultural dance inform a sense ofethno-cultural difference?

· How do various segments of an audience respond to multiculturaldance?

· Are there differences in the ways in which professional andnon-professional multicultural dance and dancers are constituted?

· What are the current funding issues for multicultural danceorganizations?

· What are the issues involved for "outsider" dancers/choreographerswho do not belong to the cultural group of a particular dance organizationthey wish to join?

· Do folk festivals ghettoize multicultural dance?

· How does multicultural dance relate to questions of gender, race, andclass?

We do not yet have a publisher. We will be submitting a proposal to auniversity press publisher and need to include extensive paper abstracts aswell as detailed biographical information from each author. If you areinterested in being considered for publication in *Multicultural Dance*,please send a 400-500 word abstract and a 200-word bio as email attachments(in Word) by October 31st, 2011 to all of the editors listed below. Once wehave determined which essays to include in the collection, we plan to submitthe book proposal by January 31st, 2012. If we are successful, thetentative deadline for the completion of essays (after acceptance) will beAugust 2012. Author submission guidelines will be provided at a later date.